contentment Quotes

“Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do.”

“It was, without question, the smallest room that he had occupied in his life; yet somehow, within those four walls the world had come and gone.”

“I told him I was quite prepared to go; but really I didn’t care much one way or the other. He then asked if a ‘change of life,’ as he called it, didn’t appeal to me, and I answered that one never changed his way of life; one life was as good as another, and my present one suited me quite well.”

“Maybe happiness didn’t have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures.”

“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”

“Nobody’s life is filled with perfect little moments. And if it were, they wouldn’t be perfect little moments. They would just be normal. How would you ever know happiness if you never experienced downs?”

“For people with money you and your sister don’t seem to have much fun.”

“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy.”

“The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection—and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth. ”

Cohn: “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.” Jake: “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.”

“Anyone who couldn’t understand that what’s important is a man’s soul, not the color of his skin, would never be content here.”

“You’ll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won’t matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all.”

“We should put life in our faith. We should give ourselves utterly to God in pure abandonment, in temporal and spiritual matters alike, and find contentment in the doing of His will, whether he takes us through sufferings or consolations.”

“That was what Curt had given her, this gift of contentment, of ease. ”

“She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size.”

“And once again it seemed to the Ordinary Princess as though the sky had fallen into the Forest of Faraway, as she lay on her back in a sea of bluebells and watched a pair of orioles building their nest in the branches over her head.”

“I’m really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart.”

Sutra II.42: Samtosad anuttamah sukhalabha Translation: From contentment, incomparable happiness is obtained.

“I’ve excluded happiness as one of those possibilities we seek for ourselves. Oh, I still want it, but that’s beside the point. Contentment - they say it’s the ultimate, but I can’t even wish for that. I don’t even want the desire to be content. I can only hope for silence.”

“He thought: Oh, I have fed on honey-dew. On wine and whiskey and champagne and the tender white meat of women and fine clothes and the respect of strong men and the fear of weak and the turn of a card and good horses and the crisp of greenbacks and the cool of mornings and all the elbow room that God or man could ask for.”

“I always have a wonderful time just where I am, whomever I’m with. I’m having a fine time right now with you, Doctor.”

“He felt very content. Just as he was dropping off to sleep his eyes snapped open. He had thought he heard a little noise... but no. All was quiet. His eyes closed again. In the morning there was no doubt about it. The noise actually woke him.”

“Now she had so much to think about as she chewed the grass, looking so pretty in a colored straw hat with streamers!”

“Together we would walk along the cliff looking at the sea, and though the white men’s ship did not return that spring, it was a happy time. The air smelled of flowers and birds sang everywhere.”

“When they could eat no more, they pawed shallow wells with their hooves for drinking water. Then they rolled in the wiry grass, letting out great whinnies of happiness. They seemed unable to believe that the island was all their own. Not a human anywhere. Only grass. And sea. And the wind.”

“Up until a couple months ago, Alex had been happy. He had never felt any great curiosity to explore beyond the safe boundaries of his own existence;”

“The highest good is like that of water. The goodness of water is that it benefits the ten thousand creatures; yet itself does not scramble, but is content with the places that all men disdain.”

“Your inner growth is completely dependent upon the realization that the only way to find peace and contentment is to stop thinking about yourself.”

“Ah, the good soup! I don’t know anything better than that.”

“When he went to bed that night, he was very happy. I have a place to live, he thought. And I’ve already got two friends. No, three. Dolly and Mr. Penn and Zaza.”

“Making the most of each moment and ridding ourselves of the toxic habit of constantly looking forward to the next thing. Be where your feet are.”

“There are hundreds of worries and even sorrows that may come along, but- I think what I really mean is that Rose won’t be wanting things to happen. She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exciting may be just round the corner.”

“I’m quite happy being what I am at the moment.”

″...she was generally happy with her body as long as it wasn’t giving her pain..”

“When I am in the country,” he replied, “I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either.”

All the branches of the tall trees which lined the mall were gay with little light green leaves and the sunlight slanted through them on to the water. The granite stone of the bridge was beginning to be warm and I began to pat it with my hands in time to an air in my head. I was very happy.

“But what I like doing best is Nothing.”

For life be, after all, only a waitin’ for somethin’ else than what we’re doin’; and death be all that we can rightly depend on. But I’m content, for it’s comin’ to me, my deary, and comin’ quick.

“Have some more beer,” said Antony with a smile. And Bill had to be content with that.

“Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life,” declared Anne. “I’m quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads. I know Matthew gave me as much love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink Lady’s jewels.”

″‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,‘” whispered Anne softly.

Why should I complain, when we both have merely done our duty and will surely be the happier for it in the end?

“I won’t fret, but it does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants, doesn’t it?”

Meg and John begin humbly, but I have a feeling that there will be quite as much happiness in the little house as in the big one.

“I try to be contented, but it is hard, and I’m tired of being poor.”

“Well, the winter’s gone, and I’ve written no books, earned no fortune, but I’ve made a friend worth having and I’ll try to keep him all my life.”

“There’s no need for me to say it, for everyone can see that I’m far happier than I deserve,” added Jo, glancing from her good husband to her chubby children, tumbling on the grass beside her.

“Fritz is getting gray and stout. I’m growing as thin as a shadow, and am thirty. We never shall be rich, and Plumfield may burn up any night, for that incorrigible Tommy Bangs will smoke sweet-fern cigars under the bed-clothes, though he’s set himself afire three times already. But in spite of these unromantic facts, I have nothing to complain of, and never was so jolly in my life.”

“I knew I should be satisfied, if I had a little home, and John, and some dear children like these. I’ve got them all, thank God, and am the happiest woman in the world,” and Meg laid her hand on her tall boy’s head, with a face full of tender and devout content.

“I want nothing now that I have you,” said the old man.

The June weather was delicious. The sky was blue, the larks were soaring high over the green corn, I thought all that countryside more beautiful and peaceful by far than I had ever known it to be yet. Many pleasant pictures of the life that I would lead there, and of the change for the better that would come over my character when I had a guiding spirit at my side whose simple faith and clear home wisdom I had proved, beguiled my way. They awakened a tender emotion in me; for my heart was softened by my return, and such a change had come to pass, that I felt like one who was toiling home barefoot from distant travel, and whose wanderings had lasted many years.

“I do not think anybody has a right to complain who remain in good circumstances: but I suppose I must be contented.”

Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna said her prayers and went to bed. She had felt for Anna with all her heart while she was speaking to her, but now she could not force herself to think of her. The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.

“I am like a hungry man who has been given food. He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he is not unhappy.”